Slovak club fights UEFA at CAS over Champions League forfeit
A member of the UEFA staff carries the Champions League trophy before the semifinal soccer match between RB Leipzig and Paris Saint-Germain at the Luz stadium in Lisbon, Portugal, Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2020. (David Ramos/Pool Photo via AP)
GENEVA (AP) — Fighting exclusion from the Champions League under new UEFA rules during the pandemic, Slovan Bratislava wants sport’s highest court to stop its previous opponent playing later Wednesday in the next qualifying round.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport said it was asked by Slovan for an urgent ruling to postpone the 8:15 p.m. (1815 GMT) kickoff in Switzerland between Young Boys and KI Klaksvik.
Slovan was denied the chance to play at Faeroe Islands champion KI in a twice-postponed game last week.
Public authorities in the Faeroes put two different squads of Slovan’s players into quarantine on the Atlantic islands after they reported virus cases in each group.
Slovan said all 35 players tested negative after returning to Slovakia. The club disputed the decision by local authorities in the Faeroes, whose decision-making power to manage suspected COVID-19 cases is granted by recently updated UEFA competition rules.
Slovan had to forfeit the first qualifying round game as a 3-0 loss ordered by UEFA’s appeal committee on Monday.
That ruling sent KI to play Swiss champion Young Boys in the second round of a tightly scheduled qualifying program for UEFA’s club competitions. The new season was already delayed by the pandemic and qualifying rounds for this season’s Champions League had to begin before the 2019-20 final was played Sunday.
Slovan appealed to CAS to freeze the forfeit ruling by UEFA and postpone the Young Boys-KI game “until CAS has ruled on the merits of the case,” the court said.
The main appeal by Slovan would also have to be fast-tracked. UEFA is drawing the third qualifying round pairings next Monday, for single-leg elimination games scheduled to be played on Sept. 15-16.
CAS said UEFA, Young Boys and KI are respondents to the appeal “and have all been given the opportunity to reply to Slovan’s urgent request.”
UEFA declined to comment to The Associated Press.
Slovan is the second club to forfeit a Champions League qualifier this month — and the second to challenge UEFA at CAS — because of player virus infections revealed in pre-game testing that is required by European competition rules.
Kosovo’s champion Drita was quarantined by Swiss authorities and could not play Linfield of Northern Ireland in a preliminary round game at a stadium next to UEFA’s headquarters.
Drita, which was not granted a postponement by UEFA of several days to bring in different players, also sought an emergency ruling from the Lausanne-based court. It was dismissed.
“We are proceeding with the case on the merits,” Drita’s Swiss-based lawyer Luca Tettamanti told the AP.
Champions League qualifying is completed by a playoff round of two-leg series played on back-to-back midweeks between Sept. 22 and 30. The 32-team group-stage draw is made Oct. 1.
Teams who will begin Champions League qualifying next month include Benfica, Dynamo Kyiv, Olympiakos and Salzburg.
After their Champions League exits, Slovan and Drita should transfer to the second-tier Europa League.
Both are scheduled to be in Monday’s draw for Europa League second qualifying round games on Sept. 17. UEFA prize money for playing those games is around 100,000 euros ($118,000) less than equivalent games in the Champions League.
___
More AP soccer: https://apnews.com/Soccer and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
No comments:
Post a Comment